Ch. 8: Never to Make War
Back to Arheled A blinding glare filled Forest’s eyes. It took a moment for him to see what was around him, to separate the glare into individual figures of light. Stars. Armies of Stars, discarding their duty to shine in the heavens. The sky was night, but it was not night. The unnatural splendour of that awful sight, of the night sky filling with silver and white suns until it was spangled day, brought tears to his eyes: he knew what would happen, what inevitably would happen. Barvast’s big voice echoed over the leagues of air. “Drëdo, I hereby call on you to render up the traitor Angar!” “I have him not!” the lofty, masterful voice of their eldest replied. “You take his side!” “I speak reason and try to instill sense!” Barvast answered, “With me stand Hormo and Gentos. We will compel you to yield him. We are not content with your pithy excuses!” Drëdo’s voice thundered in reply, “Think well, boastful brother. Two princes aid thee, but three stand behind me. I have collaborated fully with the Sun’s inquisitors, as have you all. Yet Angar has not been found. Has anyone searched the nine layers?” “Do not parry my demands with your attempts to divert attention from yourself. Every effort you make only convinces me further of your complicity. Stand aside, then, if you desire no war, and we will ransack your halls and mansions until the traitor is found.” Whirling rays of green erupted from Drëdo as his weapons powered up all at once. “I will never so yield my sovereignty as to suffer you to use Angar as an excuse to plunder and loot!” A wild roar from his army backed him up. With a flaming wall of red power Barvast and his Stars sped into motion. So terrible a sight as that charging double host of lights of heaven Forest had never imagined. The eerie beauty of the starsinging lights he knew; but in their anger, they were deadlier than ever. Redness like flowing wispy flame surged in ten thousand forms, ten thousand hues and shades of wispy red mingled with rose, and pink, scarlet and purple and violet, and even blue. Only a few had any green mingled with the red of their rage. Like two churning seas of silver and red they thundered through the exploding airs upon one another, each slanting downward so as to gain maximum momentum, so it was like a descending valley of flame. The blue of heaven faded and expired, changing first to white and then to awful lurid rose. A blinding glare of golden and silver appeared between the two armies. Amber gold and silvery red exploded into being in the valley floor where the armies were converging. Twin balls of light made both sides reel. Teleported from their appointed places by the angelic power of their rulers, the Sun and Moon stood between the halted hosts. “''Begotten!” Silmo’s hard voice and Urwendi’s scorching voice resounded with such power it must have been heard across the planet. “''In the name of the Valar and the name of the Father, we command you, by the authority of our parenthood and of our noble spirits, DISPERSE!!” “Stand from our path, old man.” said Barvast roughly. “A fine time to be getting on your high horse. Where were you when Angar wrought his evil? Maybe you let in the spirit within him. Is not he a Vala, even as are you, your own brother?” “Do you require convincing, fools?” '' roared the Sun and Moon. Their forms fell down. Their bodies toppled. Twin they stood, two naked flames. The timewalking humans, even in the suspension of the Road, cried aloud as they clamped their hands over their eyes. A blinding white light was all around, squeezing past their fingers and making their hands transparent of flesh. They felt pressure as if the air was being sucked from their lungs. They wanted to fall, to grovel into the dirt to escape the alienness of the power that was around them, that crushed breath and soul with its’ unlikeness, its’ strength, its’ utter alien nature. Power so scorching and so alien it made the mind of Forest wither even through the veil of the Road rayed out of them, as it had when Arheled commanded them to turn their backs. The sudden revelation of an intellectual substance in its’ full nature was like a mountainful of rocks falling out of the air upon a beetle. Breath failed. Minds wilted. Forms lost cohesion. Stars fled, shooting off like meteors on all sides. As suddenly as it began, the revelation ceased. Tilion and Arien pulled on their raiment of flesh, coldly and sternly. The Star-hosts were scattered. Only the Seven Captains remained. “Will you disperse, and place Angar’s hunting in our hands?” the Moon demanded. What they would have said would never be known. The three cold brothers stood with downcast eyes. Tears came from Barvast. Drëdo looked ashamed. Gentos and Hormo looked merely sullen. Barvast dashed tears from his eyes and turned to speak. He reeled, choking. A black arrow, wavering with ugly red power, stuck in his throat. He ripped it out, as the others whirled in the direction it had come from. There, wheeling out of range, were the Twins, the bows of Angar in their hands, the arrows of Angar in their quivers. Barvast shifted himself whole. “Made by Angar.” he hissed. “Your precious grandchildren are siding with Angar.” sneered Doldûn the cold to the Sun and Moon. “Yet they always were your favorites.” “It has been ''you, all this time.” snarled Barvast. “The one place we have never looked—inside the Sun and Moon!” “Are you mad?” spluttered Lundo. Chaos fell upon them. Planet shouted at Planet, and while some pushed toward the Sun and Moon, others stood in the way. “Flee, my sires!” shouted Drëdo. “We will hold off our madman brothers!” “Oh, you’ll hold us, will you?” jeered Barvast. He lifted his hand and sent out a call. Instantly the sky began to swarm and fill with stars. Forest was no longer standing amid the host, for if he had he would never have been able to comprehend the horrible chaos and splendor of that sight. He stood in a crystal forest, or a silver one at any rate, a forest growing out of thin mist that flowed opaque and cottony about the roots of the grey-silver trees. Their branches were no longer crystalline and bedewed with diamond, as they had been when Lara saw the Sun and Moon walk amid them; frost had condensed upon them as the Shadow deepened, till every twig was as thick as if wet snow had recently fallen and turned the forest into a web of lacey grey. The sky seen through and between the silver branches was silver also, a beautiful pearly silver-rose; the sight was so breathtakingly beautiful it made tears come to his eyes and freeze upon his skin. For the Stars were singing amid the branches, and he could see through the mist as if it was of glass, and while still beholding the silver limbs and the rosy sky he saw the sky filling with awful glaring flocks of winging lights. From here, from there, from every corner of the rounded airs they gathered, girl stars and women, servant stars and lords: even the housemaids were bearing the fearsome weapons of the tremendous stockpiles. Strange despairing voices began to wail from all sides: the echoes he had heard when he first walked Temple Fell. Their haunting cries and mournful notes tore and wrenched his heart. Clouds boiled on Earth. Stars boiled in heaven. The holy stars, the shining ones, so far removed from the evils of the ground. The grey branches swayed in the foreground of his sight, and above him, or below him it may be, he saw the heavens erupt into war. He saw the red and silver lights spangle and splash one against another; lights strangling lights and horrid bursts of sickening neon green and yellow power from abominable weapons unmaking entire flocks of Stars; or, worse, not unmaking them, but splashing in misty clouds of radiation and power to pollute the atmosphere. He saw the music as well as heard it, saw the music crystallize like spars of hoar upon the deepening twigs, saw the frost of song growing denser and the crystal twigs weighing ever farther down, and amid them Sophia walked, and it was she who was singing, she alone of all that host carried on the Choir’s song. Little one, who taught you to dance '' ''So high in the sky? '' ''O shining one, teach me to dance '' ''With you in the sky… '' A Star exploded, her form unmade, her substance shattered by one of the fell weapons, novas of fiery power splashing outward and withering on the wind. A web of luminous layered cloud with fingered edges and filaments of silver and green splorped all at once, a net flung across the sky. Pricks of light still burned within it, and faint hearts of reddish green flickered and keened as the Star died. The heavens rippled and shook. The air burst and wavered. Streamers of thin greenish and red mist trailed slowly away. ''Brightly, O brightly you shone from on high '' ''Melt my heart with aching love '' ''Brightly, O burning you fell from above '' ''Coming to teach my soul how to love… '' Stars spiraled downward in pearly tornados of blue and rose-purple fire, trailing streamers of power, to disappear in the clouds. Flashes of sorrowful white from within the burning clouds marked their doom. Stars form-shifted around others stars, beauty strangling beauty. Air wrinkled and exploded. Stars wrinkled and exploded. Weirdly shaped blades melded and shifted like the phantoms of a dream and lopped off pieces of form-shifting whips of violet and silver-lilac flame, and mistlike blood of deepest pure red, each drop as bright and lovely as a heart of ruby and as poignant with sorrow as tears of crimson, drifted on the air. Blue was gone from heaven. Light was gone from heaven. Stars were gone from heaven. A horrid sunset of fiery red and green and violet swirled lurid in the vault. ''Lovely one, who taught you to shine '' ''So high in the sky? '' ''O silver one, teach me to shine '' ''With you in the sky '' ''Softly, O sweetly you came from the sky '' ''Coming to see the light of my life '' ''Softly, O sweetly you went up to the sky… '' Enchanted castles wrought of snow as tough as diamond-steel melted into flowing shapes and fell as rain upon the airs, their once-pure whiteness a rose stained with blotches of purple. Crystalline palaces forged of light that had been bended into solid form and fashioned like to glass, fractured and shattered into powder and into a dreadful hail of splinters that evaporated even as they fell. Forests of mist and moonbeam bent into living growth crumpled and warped into blinding greenish-white distortions, and the cotton mist they grew in was blasted as with fire, and the frost of songs that condensed upon their silver twigs perished forever and even the memory was gone from the world, and their crystal twigs would be dewed no more. Smoky was the pure air of the heights; polluted was the brilliant blue of the clear air of Ilmen; misted with redness of vaporized blood was the holy air of Ilwë. Gone were the fountains of glass and wet light, the floorless streets, the carpets of fire. Falling were the dwellings of the dwellers celestial. Blasted were the heavens, and their fiery ruins fell in fire through the clouds and were dissolved in the sea, which was growing every moment. Faint and deep and high as a dirge the wails of men rose up from the earth. Faint and tingling and thin as deathly rain the wails of stars came down from the heavens. Under the sea the land broke. Down into the ocean Drëdo plunged, fleeing from Barvast, a frothing mass of red mist and water and flame. Full upon the ocean floor they smote; a floor that once had been dry land. Ancient forests that still held to their holes in the stones of the mountains were torn loose by the crash of the impact. There upon the land did Star strive with Star, and Planet with Planet: those offspring of the Gods, most powerful and noble of all the host of heaven, planted their forms like titans twenty miles high and grappled with ten thousand arms of power and of wind, of fire and of flesh: it was like two squirming seas straining one against another. Under their feet the land began to move. Under their feet the very earth was pushed apart. Something was rising up from the earth. Taller and taller the figure arose. He was no Star, for his form remained single, yet he was huge as a twelve-mile mountain range that stands upon one end, and his head breached the sea and his head rose even into the poisoned clouds, so that the mile-deep flood only laved his ponderous feet. He was ancient, huge, and dreadful; a beard flowed about his stonelike face, each hair like a rooted tree; and in his giant hands began to coalesce a harp as huge as a lake. The Stars paid him no heed at first, but strove ever more desperately, as chasms began to yawn in the earth underneath them and entire chunks of land, nay of continents, began to move apart. Then the figure opened his eyes. At those eyes Forest wanted to scream, but could not, for this had already happened and he could change nothing. Those eyes were ancient, eerie, horrible; a nature as old as the earth peered eagerly out of them, as alien and frightening as if a rock had suddenly leered in his face. He was a Frost-giant. He began to sing. At the first note the straining Stars froze in their places, even as the continents still moved apart, inch by inch, like ponderous and inexorable ships. Forest felt his very blood crinkle and warp; only the protection of the Road was keeping him from dying at the queerness of that singing. If the Choir had been so eerie and beautiful it had starstricken mortals who heard it, the tremendous music of the Jotunn was enough to wrench apart the very heart and soul of those who heard it. Both Stars wilted in the power of that song. Deep and ancient, great and throbbing, the mighty chant and heartrending notes shook the air like bolts of thunder, and far overhead the maddened warring of the Stars slowed to a crawl. Earth shook and sundered underneath the Bard of the Frost-Giants. Mountains cringed and wrinkled upward. Continents snapped and began to crawl apart, inexorable, ponderous as ships. The Planets staggered and turned in their places until both titanic shapes, melting at the edges, faced the Giant-Bard. Still the might of that song tore at heart and at body, for he was of the earth, and there was a power in the earth that the Stars could not face. But these were not Stars. These were the offspring of the Sun and Moon, and only shared in the nature of the Stars. Shuddering though they were they resisted the assault, and ground their melting forms slowly toward their adversary as his mighty mouth moved and thundered and immortal words no other race had found raged against the Planets. They spanned the Atlantic in five great strides and set foot upon the submerged land of the Americas. Ever more mightily the Giant-Bard strove. Slowly up against the power of the notes that were roaring like winged fire from his lips and from his harp, the two Planets lifted their spears, and as one they thrust. Through the power of his singing clove the weapons of the Stars, forged in the essence of Chaos they pierced through his pauldrons and entered the huge bulk of his mighty left shoulder. With a roar of anguish the Giant clamped both hands to the wound, snapping asunder the spears: but the hafts remained, buried deep in his flesh. “Lie there, Vipunen, and grow into stone.” hissed the sons of the Sun and the Moon. Down they cast him. Down they hurled him. Full upon his back the Giant toppled, his hands still clenched upon his shoulder, and as he lay sprawled on the earth the earth grew up and into him. Over the ages he would turn slowly into stone, becoming the Sleeping Mountain of the Utes in Colorado. Still the continents moved like tremendous ancient ships; the crust of the world was fractured in fragments, and mountains were buckling and trenches were folding as the tremendous tectonic forces pushed inexorably on at each other, and still they move to this day. ''Rising to guide my love, '' ''Conquered and died your light '' ''Dearest one, forever my guide '' ''So high in the sky! '' ''O holy one, bring me, my guide '' ''To you in the sky! '' '' '' Walking unseen through the midst of it all strode Angar, surveying his work with a satisfied stare. His arms moved and swept and rose and fell like the gestures of a symphony master conducting a sweeping chord of music, and at each gesture the chaos increased. Forest was not the only one to see him. The head of Arcturus came into his view from behind, as if Forest was moving backward. Over his eyes were strapped frames of eddying gold wire, white energy swirling between. “There he is.” he said. “My beloved,” Sophia’s voice sounded brokenly, even as she too came into view, “must you go?” “The Sun and Moon are beleaguered.” he answered. “Silmo and Urwendi cannot help me. None besides me ever thought to build seers. I fight alone.” “I will fight with you.” “Sophiala, I please to you saying that. But if Arcturus has any authority left, if one Star in his hosts has not yet deserted him, she will heed my request.” “For the love that I bear you, Arcturoha, I will do even that.” “Then may the Valar aid me.” He pressed one last kiss upon her lips. “Farewell, Sophia.” ''Shining in the midnight sky '' ''Burning through the night '' ''Bitter tears dry in my eyes '' ''As I behold the sight… '' The Lord Arcturus rose up from the earth, cleaving into the heavens amid the fume and froil of war, his powerful being blazing like a cascade of multihearted thunder as his form altered. The most potent aspects of the most powerful forms his nature was able to wear, all manifested at one time; he was like a burning sun of lights and energies beyond the natural entirely, the weapons and the tremendous might of their construction like awful halos and shooting lightnings of roping sparks playing about his thunderous nature. So dreadful a sight as the Lord Arcturus in his last rage had even Forest not seen, except for that awful vision of the splendor of the Sun and Moon. The weapons around him were like the heart of a comet, a webwork of blinding lines of metallic color, of silver flame and golden heat and amber-copper fire; and his form roared and blazed around them in terrible rays as hard as swords, rays that wavered and whipped in many hues of red and amber and pinkish-white. Like a meteor the Lord Arcturus, third brightest of the Stars, sped into the heavens, amid the fume and froil of war, cleaving blades of amplified power and dodging waves of substance-shaking energy, straight and silent upon Angar. The power inside him saw him coming. Even as Arcturus activated all his tremendous weapons and all his own huge Star-power, Angar’s eyes flickered red. That was all it took. That was all the Lord of Chaos had to do to destroy the third greatest of the Stars. Forest watched in grief and dismay as the coruscating sun that was Arcturus imploded. The thundering meteor wobbled and bloated, as the weapons inwarped and shattered, as the power collapsed and the rays lashed and boiled, the essence of Chaos by which they were powered turning upon him, while the unimaginable mind of the power inside Angar simply tore the very being of Arcturus into shreds; he began to lose form and his form distended, till he floated like a limp mist upon the wind, a mere nebula, crab-green and weblike. ''O little star '' ''O little star, so close so far, '' ''You sweep away my woe '' ''Lending light when all is dark '' ''My star, I love you so… '' Weeping Sophia obeyed his last command. Turning her silver back upon the chaos of horror above her she plunged like a fish down into the solid sea of boiling clouds and the lancing lightning of eerie neon green that lashed sickeningly from cloud to cloud and up into the Stars. The sight of Forest veered and swooped, dizzyingly as a roller coaster, in her wake, following her burning course as Sophia fell from heaven like a meteor. Veering to left, veering to right, dodging the drifting wreckage of unheavy castles unable to sink below the level of the clouds, dodging the stray beams of awful purple and red-rose that blasted and zapped between two groups of whirling fire that had to be Stars. Down through the pounding brown rain of poison and dirt that drenched her form and dampened her light, till pollution streamed from her like muddy water and her armour was melting and dripping off her form, unable to endure the acidic rain. Out of the roof of clouds she plunged, and came to a halt above the earth, astounded; and the sight of the Children of the Road halted with her, no less astounded. The earth was water. Huge cakes of shrinking ice bobbed around her. They were scalloped and pitted, the scallops a dirty greenish-blue, a heart of clearer ice of a more ordinary white showing far below the stained surface; the ridges were poisonous brown and livid green, and pits of greenish-yellow were eating into them. Boiling, lashing brown water churned from sky to sky. Lightning smote the water. Hail smote the water, and the poisoned rain cascaded in a greenish-brown glowing deluge, like a sea of poison falling from the sky; and the sea flickered in ugly rings at the touch of the foul rain. Bolts of evil-hued lightning smote the water; sometimes they merely burst it to all sides like a bomb, but sometimes great spires of crystal and stone built up out of the water only to shatter and collapse, or the water would mutate into other states and forms beneath the substance-shaking energy. Beneath the sea she saw mountains lying buried in the mire of the deep, saw through the opaque water the wreckage of cities, saw the ruin that was falling from the heavens to consume the flooded world. Then, as seas began to move beneath her, Sophia comprehended at last the titanic nature of the catastrophe her people had caused with their war. The land itself was moving. It was no current that so roiled the seas. It was the lands beneath them moving. The earth itself had snapped in pieces, and the land moved, this way and that, beneath the froil of the earthbreaking conflagration in the skies overhead. Like awful submerged ships they moved, fire welling up between them: and she knew in despair that the very shapes of the ancient world would never be the same; would, in fact, be only traces left for guesswork to deduce from the wreckage that remained. Water leaped as a stray bolt smote the sea, mountains of water rising in a tremendous explosion. Sophia was smashed, drenched with unclean water that horrified her touch; she screamed with shock as it ate upon her form. Pulling herself free she rose into the air, numb with horror. From above descended blades of red, and greenish-white, and orange: bolts of power smote the water. The war was spreading. Fleeing stars shot by overhead. Under the sea the land groaned. Clouds burst and exploded as the weapons of the Stars peppered the fleeing army. ''Gleaming like a silver flame '' ''Illumining the night '' ''I have changed, for when you came '' ''You drove away the twilight '' ''Before you came, my life was made '' ''Of shadows, dreams unreal '' ''Lonely, hating, nowhere aid '' ''Devoid of love to feel… '' Sad, despairing, the faint music of the singing of the dead grew ever more potent. Forest found himself seeing many things, as though he glanced about with the eyes of angels, not of men. He saw the drowned world, a few crags far in the south still dry. Broken lands reft by earthquake ground slowly on past each other, or away from each other, or into each other. A tiny wooden boat bobbed on the waters far below. Poison-blasted clouds eddied over the filthy waters. Far above the Stars blasted one another with weapons that were shedding poison in their wake: not only what we know as radioactive fallout, but ash of power, far more potent and ugly: the very rocks were stained, corrupting all tests later to be made on them. Not only would Arda die…she would rise up undead. The horrid colorful stars popped and flashed in the sickly brown sky. ''My sister-star, so near, so far '' ''You swept away my woe '' ''Lent me light when all was dark '' ''My star, I love you so '' A blue star, flickering and sputtering, spiraled from the heavens: Arheled was falling, the Warden in White, the king of the Road, as Forest had seen so long ago he had come in his power and trod in his strength, and he had cast the Road itself upon the Lord of Chaos, and the Road itself was not enough. Now he fell from the heavens, his mind raped, his power broken: fell into the sea, and was gone. And Sophia flew through the choking airs, silver tears dropping from her eyes, and sat upon the roof of a funny wooden ship chopping ponderously through the waves. Square was it and long, not made to sail but to float, and it was very broad, large enough for an army. Some of the humans saw this coming. She heard the confused sounds of animals below. Many animals. Doomed little animals. They would come out onto a dead world. If they were fortunate, they too would die. She wept harder. A window opened in the roof behind her. Sitting on the tar, her white garments drenched and her luminous hair falling draggled about her, she looked very little like a Star. More like a forlorn human girl pulled out of the sea. “Weep, but do not wail.” said a deep old voice from the window. Sophia looked up, choking a sob into a sniffle, and saw a human face to face for the first time. The human must have been old, for it had white hair that trailed around its’ face, and it bore as well a majestic white beard. Most Stars wore none. Sophia looked at the human’s eyes and felt a cold shock: they were eyes of power. Eyes of a prophet. “Not wail?” she repeated. “To wail is to despair, and despair is death inside.” the human said. “Both our peoples have perished. Mine has already…yours soon will.” “Both of us will.” sniffled Sophia. “The sky is death settling downward. I may live…not you.” “We will live.” the old man said. “Have faith in Him who made us, little Star. He told me I would live. He does not lie.” “I hope He is keeping an eye on things, then. A boat cannot save you from air.” “The Herald comes.” said the human. “Stay down here, little Star. Touch no weapon. Make no fight. Or your curse will find you also.” “Oh, that.” she sniffled. “We countered that. It bites no longer.” “It will when He blows his horn.” said the human. “Rest upon my roof. Or change to a fish. Do not go back to the heavens. They are gone.” “Who are you, human?” said Sophia. “I am Noe.” he answered. “I am last of the line of Adam. From me shall the earth be repeopled.” Then the window swung shut, and she heard bolts sliding into place. Forest felt his foot touch earth. Bitter night air rushed in around him. Five strange cloaked figures stood beside him on the narrow cobbled road curving under the solemn old hemlocks. The entire top of Temple Fell was lit now with a blueish white, as pure and clear as the cold-brilliant stars overhead. At his feet, propped against a hickory, was a short slab of stone. Graven in glowing letters it read ''The Road M. 0.1. “There are two ends of the Road.” said Arheled. “The first end lies before you. The second lies behind. Both must be trodden before midnight ends.” Forest looked behind him at the stars. The Herald stood perfectly upright, just as he had before. They were still in one moment. Then he moved one step forward, and Temple Fell faded from his eyes. He stood in the Voids of Space. To the right of his field of vision he saw a round globe, and at first he thought it was some alien world, for it was entirely brown. Turgid brown surged below huge layers of brown and eerie poisonous green clouds that covered the entire earth, even the poles. Then he saw the pops and flickers of still-warring Stars speckling the clouds and the grey outer air with frosty green and blue and occasional red, and he knew at once that this was Arda, the globe of Earth, sad, battered, wracked. He looked for the Moon, expecting it to be a ball of pocked stone hanging at a distance and the Sun to be a blazing globe farther off, but he saw only utter darkness everywhere else. In the North the blackness was speckled with colliding lights, and two mightier ones strove amid them, silver and smouldering amber, yet were they dim and nothing like the glory that was rightfully theirs: the Sun and Moon, foundering and dying in the fury of their children. A single star grew in the blackness. Like a minute prick of light, it grew bigger, with terrible speed beyond reckoning; and now Forest could see it. It was a ship. A ship of glittering fire. The hull was of green-silver glass and of a silvery metal that sparkled and flamed in beautiful patterns, and it was masted with fire and lightning snapped about it for pennant. And the light of that ship came from one man standing erect upon the prow, and on his head he had bound a gem of great size and brilliance, and from it came all his light. His clothes and mail sparkled as with dust of gems. His sword burned like silver flame. His face was blazing white, but his eyes burned like two stars beneath the great star of his jewel. It was the Evening Star himself, hastening to war at the call of the Sun and the Moon. Then Forest was aware that not everything was black. Three bursts of light leaped up in the path of the ship. Angelic power slowed the rush of the Star. There, gigantic wings spread though there was no need to use them above the airs, a seven-headed dragon loomed. Vast was he as a mountain that lifts itself above the airs, and his scales sparkled red and dreadful gold in the light of the Silmaril, yet his eyes burned with a dark red flame that even that light could not overwhelm. Upon every head flashed a diadem of diamond, and the stars of their gems were the souls of living men he had chained into his service, and great horns thrust beneath them. Two lights flashed past him, one a bluey-red, the other a frosty purple-white: Polaris and Charosa. The Mariner lifted his sword. The light of the Silmaril flashed like lightning as he wielded it as he had wielded it once before, thousands of years before, when dragons as big as this had shadowed the very mountains with their wings. But he was not facing a mere dragon, not even one of the abominable Primeval Dragons whose power came from the spirits bound into them. He was facing Carn’hell’nar himself, equal in might to the Lord of the Cosmos, out of the highest of the choirs of the ancient Ainur. The power of the Father of Dragons beat against the sanctified light of the hallowed gem. Like a wind of gleaming darkness wound about with curls of shimmering red it strove against the wind of white, and turned it back, beat it down. The Mariner found himself outmatched. He ground his teeth as he fought. His ship shuddered underneath him. Then the two Stars fell upon him. Already beleaguered, the added might was too much, and clouds and smothering webs of thick white power captured the Ship and held fast the Mariner upon it. Down they forced him. Down pushed the Dragon. Down through the poisoned airs they beat him. Violently he struggled. So great was the light that escaped from him it seemed a second Sun had entered the sky. But still they wrestled him down, ever down, until the water met them, and under the water they forced the Evening Star. Still in the waters the Mariner wrestled, for he who could tread the voids and live had no need of breath and could not drown. Still down the Dragon bore him, breathing water against him like a black flood and no longer darkness, and the Silmaril shone ever more dimly, foundering in the lightless depths of the murky sea, a cloudy red globe amid the black night of the deep. Down upon drowned Connecticut they bore him. Still encased in ice as it was, already mountaintops were jutting through the ice, and the Dragon broke a hole in it and forced him down. Laughing did Charosa leap aboard the bounded ship, her naked glory flaming white and red in the icy water, her hair flowing about her like golden flame: and she was so lovely even the Mariner was only able to turn his head with great effort. Hatred flamed in Venus’s eyes. The daughter of the Sun and Moon, greater than any of the Stars, leaped upon him and bore him from his vessel. To the buried earth she held him, crushing his luminous face into the ground. Laughing she held him, as calcification crept up the glasslike sides of his vessel, as coral shrouded the gleaming masts, as with one last cry of anguish the breathless Mariner, Earendil himself, was turned into stone. “The Silmaril! We must take the Silmaril!” cried Polaris, pulling at the petrifying helm of the Mariner. “Leave it be, darling.” sneered the Father of Dragons. In the turgid water his face was barely to be seen, but a weird and malicious smile was growing upon it. “I have use for you. It was not out of charity I lent thee my aid. I am weak from ages of slumber among the stars where I hid. To walk again upon the earth in bodily form I will need strength. Yours, to be exact.” Polaris and Charosa whirled, alarm growing in their faces, and from their hands streamers of misty power flamed and flowed like glowing water. “Too slow, mighty king, pretty queen.” laughed Carn’hell’nar. A gelatin spell appeared around Polaris, holding him bound. Charosa screamed and shot into the heavens, just barely eluding the second spell. “Perhaps I may take that back, lovely one.” said Glaurung, arching a fiery brow. “But you, at least, shall give me strength, O King of the North.” Then he clamped his jaws upon the helpless form of Polaris. Forest followed the fleeing Charosa, up into the airs. She hovered in space, aghast. Where the cities of the Stars and the palaces of the Choir and the forests of crystal dew and freezing song had been were only drifting wreckage, misty clouds of broken light, and poison floating in great spreading stains. He saw her bewilderment at the ruin all around her. She fled farther, out into the bitter voids, her world in ashes, seeking only flight. A flash spread from the embattled Earth, in a flat plane, shooting outward. Through the darkness of the Void it sped, faster than any light, like a blue ring. It was the Road, calling aloud. Its’ Steersman had fallen. An answering flash came from the left. As if a door had opened, and shut again. Streaking through the black voids, along the plane of the Road, stretched a band of silver. It was brilliant as silver flame, and yet it was liquid, it flowed like a raging flood, crashing through the voids at the speed of the winds. Riding upon it was a star of brilliant flame. Suddenly he was much closer. Close enough to make out the individual stars in the wild chaos of the Rebellion. Three of the Alaplondo were trying still to defend the Sun. Anar burned a deep red-orange as if it was sunset, but this was no illusion of the horizon. Ithil too was coppery, as pale as if he was in eclipse. Flashes and tremendous bursts and explosions of multihued power filled the air around them. The golden-red star underlaid by silver grew larger. Its’ glow filled the stormy air, lighting it a weird unnatural silver-red. The poison and the livid scars of the ruin of the heavens all faded as the very void itself began to blush silver and rose, and the silvery rose filled the wreckage of the heavens and cast the very Stars into shadow. Fighting slowed as the Stars viewed this new threat. There was a shock of power like a blast wave. Stars reeled and staggered. Others, ignoring the embattled Sun, turned their tremendous weapons onto the meteor. It was a man, or a figure shaped like one. He wore a great belt with huge white jewels in it that blazed like stars. His shape was graceful and flowing and seemed to be made of some crystalline substance that gleamed like water suffused with gold. Great waves of hair of a burning red fell about the longest, thinnest, most far-drawn features Forest had ever seen, which gave his face an amazingly stern and pitiless cast. In the eyes was a cool and piercing clarity of light. He was naked, yet not obscene, and flowing from his shoulders was a mighty mantle of red and gold. Upon one arm was a night-blue buckler set with stars. In his right hand he held drawn a curious narrow sword with a curved blade like a scimitar. In the left hand was a curled bow that gleamed with a grim light, and each horn was a single star. A quiver of arrows fletched with white fire, their shafts red as blood, hung over his mantle. Calf-deep he stood in the river of silver, as with anger like a sea it roared down from the layers of the heres and the heights of the worlds it filled and illumined, drawn down in rage to this most important of worlds. From his belt hung a horn, queer of shape, every inch wrought in signs and figures so complicated they defeated the sight; but they were signs of power. It was the Herald. The power of the weapons never even reached him. His shield glowed. All power to near him quenched and expired. His arms whirled, and in an instant he had sheathed the sword, and nocked an arrow, and fired: downward, into the swirling clouds, where Arheled had fallen. “Who are you?” challenged Drëdo. “I am Menelmacar.” the being replied. His voice was strong and airless, rich with power, like a golden tornado. “I am the Herald.” “Of whom are you the Herald? Do you serve Angar?” “I am the Herald of the Lord of the Cosmos.” he said. “I come from the throne of Manwë. I come to doom the heavens. I come to cure.” He drew back the arrow. Red as blood, the head gleamed with a cold fire like a golden cluster of stars. “You lie! You stand for yourself!” Drëdo shouted. “The head of the Herald is hidden from view,” the Herald answered, “because I do not stand for myself; my head is Manwë, who acts through me.” The eyes of Drëdo widened as he saw his own death. Moving as only Stars can he shot into the heavens. The Herald released. Through the airs like a stream of lightning the arrow sped, the path it left a vivid gold. Like a gold lightning-bolt the arrow caught Drëdo. A weird red-black flash spread through him. He reeled. He looked down at his gurgling form. “It cannot be.” he whispered. Arrows gold as lightning poured from the Herald. Bow and arms were invisible, they moved so fast. Through the heavens like a cataract of rays of death-bearing glory the arrows of the Herald sped and pursued, veering to right and to left as they hunted their targets; and howsoever far the Stars fled from it or how fast they moved, the power of the Herald was faster, and the arrows struck them, and the Stars turned blackish-red. Gold thunderbolts struck the Stars. They dropped weapons. They wobbled about the heavens. Their forms began to leak light. Arrows gold as lightning smiting Sun and Moon and sons; '' ''Stone and gas and fire come to being where none was '' ''Stars are fleeing outward leaving light and life and love… '' With a flash of darkness a figure appeared behind the Herald. It was black of hair, and no light came from him, for it was Angar the Dark; but he was sheathed in armour mightier than any others of the Stars, and on his shoulders and in his hands and bristling from every pane of his scaled armour were weapons and blades, darts and needles of silver and blackish red. More potent than any other were these weapons, for they had been forged by the Lord of Chaos himself, using black magic to milk the power of the Road and the strength of the very Universe and to wed it to his own essence: these weapons could have overcome the Gods. “May your Lord save you.” he sneered as he unleashed them. The power warped backward into Angar as the shield of the Herald glowed. It defended the wearer from any power, whether angelic or vendaic. “Amen.” the Herald answered mildly. Shock, and then horror, showed in the possessed eyes of the Black Star. “This cannot be.” he whispered. “You are no Seraph. You are only Maia. How the hell can you hold me off?” “I condemn you to true death.” the Herald said. “Your inert form will be shattered, spread as asteroids; you will not awake when I sound the End of the World.” “Do you not know, little angel, whom it is that you now speak?” hissed the Dark Star, and the voice was deep, grinding as stone, and the eyes were like a void in reality itself. And the Herald looked at him, and did not tremble or shake. Serene was his expression, unshakeable in his confidence, and despite the smallness of his nature he seemed suddenly impregnable, the focus of titanic powers and unimaginable forces that had met and joined in him. “I do.” he said simply. He stabbed Angar with an arrow and thrust the writhing Dark Star away. “My lord!” Angar howled. “Chaos! Where are you?” “He needs you no longer.” said the Herald, his arms moving of themselves, sending once more a perfect cateract of arrows into the swirling armies of Stars. “He was in Arheled, but my arrow cast him out. He was in you, but he has left you to your own destruction. He cannot stand up to the power that is in me until the Dagor Dagorach.” Like a laden ship wallowing up from a burying wave, the Sun and Moon struggled out of the seas of seething Stars. “Menelmacar!” cried Urwendi. “At last! The Valar have come!” And the Herald turned to the Sun and Moon. Slowly he lifted his bow. Dismay, and then dismal acceptance, showed on the faces of the Lights of Heaven. A stern sorrow was in his face. “I have not come to save you, Arien.” He nocked two arrows different than the rest. “You deemed the law of the Stars was a physical warning, to be overcome like a disease. It was a command. It was meant to be obeyed. You have not obeyed it. Share, therefore, in the doom you accepted.” The arrow pinned Urwendi to the ship. “We did what we did to defeat and destroy the maker of Chaos and the lord of destruction.” she gasped. “Does this count for nothing?” “It is why a worse fate is held from off thee, my sister.” said the Herald as he turned to the Stars. “Flee,” Urwendi bade her maidens, as the juices of the Fruit began to seethe and boil. “Return to Valinor. You were not under my doom—you should not share my curse.” Like a flight of birds the weeping maidens cast off their raiment of flesh, and sped like arrows of fire back to Valinor. “Urwendi,” Silmo called from the Moon, “canst thou hear me?” “I hear thee, Silmo.” she answered. Gold lightning sped by on every side. “He smote me also.” said the lord of the Moon. “I feel stone creeping through me, through the Moon. Are you in pain, my beloved?” “Ah, Tilion.” sighed the lady of the Sun. “Ever you longed to shine with me, and long you sought me across the skies. Great has been our love. We knew the joy of the Incarnates…now we shall also know the bitterness of their sorrow. We shall know death.” “You are Maia. If your raiment perishes, it touches you not.” “We incarnated, Silmo.” the Sun said softly. “We will not be freed. I feel death in me. I will be fire…you will be stone. Our spirits will sleep, chained still to stone and fire; I will burn as a furnace in the body of my vessel and the fires will burn and consume one another, and anguish will possess me, though I see not how. Stone will you be and as stone will you sleep, and as fire will I burn, until the curse is reversed at the end of the World.” “Long have I loved thee, Urwendi. I thank thee for all thou hast been to me. I am glad we knew bliss, for a little time.” “Long have I loved thee, Silmo. Great is my grief that our tale is gone down, and our glory is doomed, to sink into darkness of stone and of flame.” Forest heard them no more. The Herald had fired his last arrow. He stood for a moment above the sea of wailing Stars, a great sorrow in his stern face. “Now pass the heavens of old.” he said. From his side rose his hand. The beautiful horn was clasped in the golden fingers. From the mouth burst a fierce yellow light. He set it to his lips and sounded his horn. Pure sound made visible cataracted over Forest like a river of golden light. One single dreadful note filled the air, pure and beautiful and solemn as the Silent Mountain itself. The gold sound thinned before his eyes, though the note did not stop, and he beheld the end of the world that had been. Star-weapons shattered like tinkling glass, colored smoke drifting out of their dust as they blew on the wind. Frosty nebulae formed around each of them as armour was dissolved and their raiment destroyed, till their naked essences hung, transfixed by that sound. Dragged by their arrows the Stars shot off in every direction, the way water-droplets do on the surface of a pond when water drips on it, until the battered globe was surrounded by a net of gleaming stars. There hung they writhing as the note increased, until with a unanimous wail they were catapulted outward into the Void in every direction. Under the power of the Lord of the Cosmos they filled the blackness with bars of blinding silver, moving at unbelievable speeds, until they outstripped their own light and it was by the Road alone that Forest saw them. And as they sped, they transformed. Their power ripped out of them like luminous mist. Each droplet of mist shot outwards, growing and swelling, until it too shattered, and sent its’ droplets out in every direction. And when the last speck of power had finished exploding, it ceased to be power. The final droplets grew like seeds of some awful thing of smoke; gas and stone built up, mist pouring in around itself in tendrils of thickening luminous smoke, wrapping and condensing until it burned with hearts of flame; comets raced through the skies, and silent rocks tumbled sadly through the emptiness, and great furnaces of gas boiled and seethed, suns upon suns beyond suns. The black void was lit with spangled dust of red, and intolerable white, and misty yellows and cold blues. The stars as we know them had been born. Galaxies of stars. Clusters of galaxies, borne on the wind of the power of the horn of the Herald still ever outward. And along the plane of the Road clustered a disk of rotating stars, and the motionless Arda began to drift in their wake. And along the plane of the Road the galaxies all began to curve, until they were flowing like a vast river in its’ direction. Earth suddenly bulged and grew closer, as if he was zooming in with an unseen lens. The air was no longer brown and poisonous, but clear. Yet it was not the air that it had been. No longer was Ilmen so blue and clear. New layers had been formed. Great shields of magnetism looped out from the Earthheart to defend Arda against the deadly breath of the new heavens: until then the Earth’s magnetic field had not existed, Forest realized with a great shock. Compasses had steered in the ancient world only by the composition of the bedrock itself; now they had magnetic poles to point toward, and compass-north was not true north. Outward tumbled the proud lords of the Stars. Outward spun the Nine Planets. In space they stopped, two on one side, seven on the other. Their forms swelled and grew solid. Stone unfolded. Gas condensed. Some burped and belched as they settled down, struggling in their last throes, sending loops and grasping hands of energy; and then the curse consummated, and energy and power hardened into moons, and droplets of stone, and rings appeared as the closer ones began to rotate in bands around these Planets. The Moon spun outwards too. As he spun he grew, until he was round, and the Blossom became a heart of fire deep under the stone, and still upon his ship Tilion stood, growing taller, a giant made of stone. And Anar swelled, seething with fire, and Urwendi swelled, becoming fire also; and the Sun came into being, and the Solar System was born. Forest looked out into the stars. There was the Dipper, and he made out Polaris, faint and dimmer than he was, for most of his power had been sucked up by the Father of Dragons before the Herald’s arrow found him. Last was Arcturus, now a distending shape of fire. The Herald lowered his horn from his lips. “Thou alone stood against the Lord of Chaos, sacrificing thyself.” he said. “Wherefore be thou closest of all stars, that when I sound the unmaking of the heavens, thou be first to rise.” A grateful light pulsed from the swirling ball that was Arcturus, before with a great cry he sailed outward into the heavens. Then the Herald placed his horn in his belt, and he stepped calf-deep into Daslenga, and the river of silver bore him back through the new heavens, until he vanished into the Star Murzim: the Herald Star. Two forms breached the sea like nymphs, water pouring from hair and from clothes as they thundered up from the sea, from where they were hiding: Diana and Apollo. In their hands were the bows of Angar. In their quivers the arrows of Angar gleamed. “So it befell even as our Uncle said.” Diana uttered in a cold and dreadful voice. “I will take the Moon; you will take the Sun. I am cold and you are hot; let us become gods.” Forest had seen it before, and he closed his eyes as the Moon was cast from his vessel and the Sun was violated, but the others had not seen it, and they could not look away nor shut their eyes, as the genders of the lights of heaven were reversed. For a brief moment Forest was aware of the mountain around them, and then the Road lay before them, and they had passed the Third Milestone and the altar, and were walking up the last of the two ends of the Road. This time was not like the others. Under their feet wound the cobblestones road, and yet it seemed to be winding among an overlaying space-existing multitude of terrains: the solemn pines of Temple Fell were transparent as dark ghosts, and under them spread a forest of stone trees, and yet this too was transparent, and under it were layers of burning plains and fiery dark and crystalline hills of purest glass, and under all of this enormous blue stars with white hearts burned in the branches of the trees. Wading through the layers of physical space came Arheled, brilliant bluey-white and indistinct as a ghost, yet the features that the light seemed to impress into their minds, were the same features under which they had come to know him. As they followed in his wake they saw curving below them five fantastic layered towers, solid stone churches and superimposed phantom fortresses built one over another and yet one within another, nine layers thick. A sixth united them at their center, and only it and the steeple of the midmost breached the Ninth Layer. From the Soldier’s Tower they saw white beams spring to each church, and from church to church, until a solid shield of white power barred the North. Still higher they climbed in the wake of the footsteps of Arheled, and the misty cobblestones lay now over abyss. It was as if they were seeing through things, to the hidden back of things, to the concealed cognition of the very foundation of reality itself. Inifestimable fogs of gleaming dust filled the ether they walked in, the foundations of matter at the bottommost level, and above a certain point (not above in regards to height, because the overlayment was in the same place, but above in a sense none could ever explain, an above in nature) the dust was overlaid by curving interlocking grids going every direction and at every conceivable angle: mathematics, systems of coordinates, the laws of measurement by which all matter was constructed. But the grids were all flat. It felt like standing on one’s head, to see the almighty grids and numbers, the values and events, tilt and flatten, while their sight gained new dimensions and soared up in unguessable shapes far above and beneath: structures all luminous, and queer misty looping patterns winding through the grids with no relation or dependence to them, and they were every color known to man, and colors as well that no man had ever known. “This is the other aspect of that which is.” Arheled’s voice, fluid and thunderous like a blue river, fell into their minds. “This is the interaction of differing principles with the material principle. Life envivens the dead matter, and sensing reaches outward and assembles images and memory. And the soul of man—see the blades of fire?—it reaches into its’ own matter and unites with it in a way no instrument divines. And weaving into matter are the hands of spirits as they act, and the hands of '' venda and the imprint of their hands: the angelic principle and the paravallian or vendaic by which such beings produce effects. In short, what lies here are the interactions of efficient causes upon that on which they produce effects.” The Road steepened. Grids fell behind, seen far below as a level floor. Running through all the interweaving principles was a barrier of iron, a web of power, weaving and binding and churning ever forward, and it was Time, sundering what is from what was and will be; and no matter could escape it, nor could even the other principles pass out of the iron corridor of the Present: though they could rise above it. And as the Road switchbacked higher, the Children of the Road realised that the whole gigantic tapestry of grids and actions of angels, venda and men, was contained inside that iron corridor, and only by sight could any being step beyond it, to see what had been or peer into what would; they could not walk there, in person or in power. Dared they try, he who strode over the corridor and enforced all its’ workings would prevent them. Then they rose beyond Time and its’ rooftops lay below, Space and Matter all in one mighty disk containing all worlds, and the disk was a cone, for the center of it rose: yet the iron corridor travelled forward unequally, slowest above our world and varyingly faster everywhere else, so that the Present was like a wavy line. “Only by travelling along the Present can other worlds’ times be entered and left.” said Arheled. “Sometimes the other worlds’ loops move too fast and have to go slower, that ours by which all is measured may catch up; and our bend of time never wavers. For we are the central world, and here was God made Incarnate.” He gestured around them. Vast shapes too smoky and brilliant to easily discern towered and churned around them. “The spiritual realms. See beyond us, the White Mountain above the Worlds, the storehouses of Heaven, the perfect places, the Library and the Halls of Doom and the machinery of Creation. We are in Angelhome, Aveternity.” Red light served for air. Forms and shapes and signs of fire wheeled and winged and burned. Their minds began to spin and swoon: they were mortals, the lands of the Gods were too much. “Look up!” thundered Arheled. “Look up if you can, for the Road climbs no further than the floors of They from whom It proceeded. Behold Reality!” As strainingly as if lifting a millstone on their necks, the Children of the Road tilted their heads upwards. Red smoky fires mounted up, growing whiter, growing brighter—and Above that which exists, they suddenly knew with searing certitude, was That which Is. Their minds swooned. Their balance broke. Full upon their backs fell the Children of the Road. It was like looking into the sun: the excess of light fills the eyes and forces them to close. “You will freeze if you lie there too long like that.” With a slow grogginess the six youths sat up. They were fallen upon frozen grass in the center of a round glade. Small grey hickories and oaks stood knee-deep in the grass, and black hemlocks ringed it, cowled like monks. Behind them the narrow cobblestones road ran out of the glade on its’ way along the mountain. Beneath them, in the glade’s center, it simply ended. So did Temple Fell, falling away in steep slopes ahead and to either side. They were at the southwestern end. Overhead the blue-white unwinking Stars burned hard and keen, and the Herald still stood upright, aiming his arrow at the North Pole. “I thought we would find the White Tree.” said Forest. “You said it was planted on the Road.” “I planted it inside Wayham King, last of the line of Elendil through Fintan the Undying, and he assumes its’ form when he wishes. He is in Europe now, and the Seven Sleepers are with him, and they make for the Sleeping Heros.” “The Lore.” said Lara. “What was it’s meaning?” “I should think the first two riddles are clear. But the third—it is a mystery, Lara. For Daslenga is threefold, even as the nature of light is threefold, and he flows in the Tower as he flows in the heres, and yet also flows here as a common stream. Midnight is over. It is Christmas Day now, and the Road has returned. Let it be hidden, but not sent back, for the last hour, I greatly fear, is upon us. “I will send you home now, and you’d better get some sleep before you go to spend time with your families and all. I have done calling. I am well-pleased. Merry Christmas, my sons and my daughters, in the name of the Road.” ' Here ends the first tale of ARHELED ' Back to Arheled